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Vancouver Referencing

Legal material

Legislation

  • Short title of the Act or Regulations in italics – (if no short title use the long title)
  • Year in italics or underlined
  • (Jurisdiction) abbreviated and in round brackets
  • Pinpoint reference to the relevant section or subsection if applicable

Format for Legislation
Title Year (Jurisdiction Abbreviation) Pinpoint.

Case Law 

  • Case Name in Italics or underlined if unable to italicise
  • Year in brackets eg. (2012) for reports with sequential volume numbers and therefore the year is not essential for locating the correct volume in the series OR use square brackets eg. [2012] where the year is essential to locate the correct volume
  •  Volume number
  • Abbreviation of the law report
  • Commencing page number of the case,
  • Pinpoint page number, separated from the commencing page number by a comma (only when referring to a specific statement in the judgement)
  • Name of the court – only used when it is not obvious from the citation what the deciding court was

Format for reported cases
Case Name (Year) Volume Law Report Abbreviation Page, Pinpoint (Court).

NOTE: where a case has been reported in the ‘authorised” reports for that court, you should use that citation in preference to any other citation which you may have.

Further information about citing legal resources:

In-text citation:

Important iconWhere you are referring to legislative provision in the text of your work, you should write as you would speak.

Section 58 of the Trusts Act 1973 (Qld)1 states that ... NOT Trusts Act 1973 (Qld) s 581 states that ...

Reference list:

Short title of the act (in italics) Year (in italics) (Juridiction) Pinpoint reference to relevant section.

  1. Trusts Act 1973 (Qld) s 58.

In-text citation:

In Bakker v Stewart5 the ...

Reference list:

Case name in italics [year in round or square brackets see Elements of the citation] Volume Number Abbreviation of law report Commencing page number of case Pinpoint (Name of Court only when not obvious from citation).

  1. Bakker v Stewart [1980] VR 17,22. .

Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (2nd edition) and AMA manual of style provide detailed guidance in formatting bibliographic citations in Vancouver referencing style.